As a college student, I have been in need of making some additional cash considering the fact that I am getting married in May. As a Arch. Design student, I have done plans for builders in the city where I go to school, but because building is slow right now, I went elsewhere to find a job. I applied at Lowes Home Improvement and got a job designing kitchens with a basic CAD program. During orientation, I was educated on compensation possibilities, 401ks and stock options.
I find it incredibly interesting that people like us(those getting a professional degree in either a BArch or an MArch or both) will usually only be making between 35-45k for the first 3-5 years in our profession OR I could walk into Lowes without a college degree or even a high school degree and get a job and within 2 years I could be making a salary of at least 40k, with commission, a 401k plan that matches better than many companies, stock options, and mortgage programs allowing employees to buy a home with a lower interested rate than the current available rates anywhere else.
Not to be disrespectful, but there are men I work with who barely speak our English language correctly who have over half a million dollars in a 401k- not to mention what they have in a stock account that is provided for them for free.
I find all this incredibly interesting considering how much we will all spend for an education and then how we will be compensated for having professional degrees. Part of our job is to protect the life, health, and safety of the public in our designs. Like doctors, who do a similar job(which I realize is quite a bit more intense than our job as far as liability is concerned), they get paid based on the seriousness of their jobs.
Anyhow, I am just thinking and wondering if anyone else finds this puzzling.
sounds like you just saved yourself a lot of money. ;)
Mar 9, 05 2:03 pm ·
·
the difference is the non-monetary artistic satisfaction we get from being designers, and not lowe's employees
or so they say. i think it is crap. architects are way too smart to be paid so little for so much work.
it's like the farmer who works his brains out all day for the amount of money an ibanker makes in the bathroom every day. pay isn't proportional to work. but it should be proportional to the education/talent/skills required for a job, since the harder it is to get into a field, the smaller the supply of labor, and consequently the higher the wages in that field. somehow architects get bypassed, because it is hard as balls to become one, but demand is still low for our services.
for a company like lowe's, it can afford to pay its employees a little more so that they retain them, and consequently don't have to train their replacements, and when people feel as though they'll be with a company for a long time, they do better work. and really, comparable jobs will pay similar rates. the other problem with the architecture labor market is that once you're in, you're in. you don't jump to another job - maybe another employer, but not another job. if you design kitchens at lowe's it isn't a huge crisis to leave and go work in some other field. most architects would never consider working in another field, so employers can pay lower wages to entry level architects, because we're not going to leave.
basically, we go to school for a long time to do a job that only a small portion of the population cares about. so there isn't huge demand for our services, so we get compensated proportionally. the tradeoff is that you like doing it so much that you'll settle for less money.
Why don't more architects consider switching fields? I would imagine that an architect with say 5-10 yrs post college experience could demand a pretty nice salary in the construction or real estate market. I also assume that large corporations have project managers specifically assigned to various construction sites. This would be a perfect position for an architect.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there are a number of opportunities outside of the traditional architecture office.
i was in lowe's yesterday. "attention one teammember from each department report immediately to the parking lot for cart roundup."make no little plans my friend
lowe's wouldn't hire me as a kitchen designer. didn't even land an interview. it was new store opening - so many open positions. i guess putting Education: Bachelor of Architecture on a lowe's resume will get you thrown out of the running right away!
not resume - application I mean. it hardly even fit in the space. GED doesn't need a lot of room.
i got a job but didn't take it for a custom woodworking joint. they were going to pay me the same as the architecture job and it would have been really really fun. everyone there was seriouly really happy - they even called it the happy factory. most their employees came in on saturdays just to hang out and drink coffee - they got to make furniture out of the scraps for free. when i interveiwed i didn't want to leave i just sat there smiling, the guy said "UH, interviews over...." to give me the hint.
did I make the right choice by taking the arch job? i wonder. i wouldn't call the place i work at now the happy factory. i'd call it the sucky place. and we don't even have folgers. we drink "member's mark" coffee like we're homeless or something. god i need to move.
Interesting. I was just thinking about going down to the new Lowes they are building here and trying to get a supplemental part-time gig as a kitchen designer… and now to find out they may not even hire me…
i met with a friend of mine, who is working in the Expo Store as assistant interior designer. Not to be disrespectful, but her work ethics during school really sucked - it was only a surprise as to how she survived 5 years in school and graduated.
Somehow the people in Expo have fallen in love with her and she now makes (get this-) 65K per year after 2 years of working there. With all benefits. Also, she mentioned that clients and contractors look at her with a lot of respect because she works at Expo, and her design decisions are also given a lot of consideration.
I too was employed at Lowes for a year and a half. But I slung paint in the paint department. In general I value the experience for what it was...a nice weekend job. However, it gets pretty old telling customers were to find stuff...think about this next time you go into a store and start asking questions before you read signs.
This one guy seriously came up to me and said.." know if I was a hammer where would I be?"
Mar 9, 05 7:38 pm ·
·
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Lowes or a Degree???
As a college student, I have been in need of making some additional cash considering the fact that I am getting married in May. As a Arch. Design student, I have done plans for builders in the city where I go to school, but because building is slow right now, I went elsewhere to find a job. I applied at Lowes Home Improvement and got a job designing kitchens with a basic CAD program. During orientation, I was educated on compensation possibilities, 401ks and stock options.
I find it incredibly interesting that people like us(those getting a professional degree in either a BArch or an MArch or both) will usually only be making between 35-45k for the first 3-5 years in our profession OR I could walk into Lowes without a college degree or even a high school degree and get a job and within 2 years I could be making a salary of at least 40k, with commission, a 401k plan that matches better than many companies, stock options, and mortgage programs allowing employees to buy a home with a lower interested rate than the current available rates anywhere else.
Not to be disrespectful, but there are men I work with who barely speak our English language correctly who have over half a million dollars in a 401k- not to mention what they have in a stock account that is provided for them for free.
I find all this incredibly interesting considering how much we will all spend for an education and then how we will be compensated for having professional degrees. Part of our job is to protect the life, health, and safety of the public in our designs. Like doctors, who do a similar job(which I realize is quite a bit more intense than our job as far as liability is concerned), they get paid based on the seriousness of their jobs.
Anyhow, I am just thinking and wondering if anyone else finds this puzzling.
sounds like you just saved yourself a lot of money. ;)
the difference is the non-monetary artistic satisfaction we get from being designers, and not lowe's employees
or so they say. i think it is crap. architects are way too smart to be paid so little for so much work.
it's like the farmer who works his brains out all day for the amount of money an ibanker makes in the bathroom every day. pay isn't proportional to work. but it should be proportional to the education/talent/skills required for a job, since the harder it is to get into a field, the smaller the supply of labor, and consequently the higher the wages in that field. somehow architects get bypassed, because it is hard as balls to become one, but demand is still low for our services.
for a company like lowe's, it can afford to pay its employees a little more so that they retain them, and consequently don't have to train their replacements, and when people feel as though they'll be with a company for a long time, they do better work. and really, comparable jobs will pay similar rates. the other problem with the architecture labor market is that once you're in, you're in. you don't jump to another job - maybe another employer, but not another job. if you design kitchens at lowe's it isn't a huge crisis to leave and go work in some other field. most architects would never consider working in another field, so employers can pay lower wages to entry level architects, because we're not going to leave.
basically, we go to school for a long time to do a job that only a small portion of the population cares about. so there isn't huge demand for our services, so we get compensated proportionally. the tradeoff is that you like doing it so much that you'll settle for less money.
Why don't more architects consider switching fields? I would imagine that an architect with say 5-10 yrs post college experience could demand a pretty nice salary in the construction or real estate market. I also assume that large corporations have project managers specifically assigned to various construction sites. This would be a perfect position for an architect.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there are a number of opportunities outside of the traditional architecture office.
i was in lowe's yesterday. "attention one teammember from each department report immediately to the parking lot for cart roundup."make no little plans my friend
lowe's wouldn't hire me as a kitchen designer. didn't even land an interview. it was new store opening - so many open positions. i guess putting Education: Bachelor of Architecture on a lowe's resume will get you thrown out of the running right away!
not resume - application I mean. it hardly even fit in the space. GED doesn't need a lot of room.
i got a job but didn't take it for a custom woodworking joint. they were going to pay me the same as the architecture job and it would have been really really fun. everyone there was seriouly really happy - they even called it the happy factory. most their employees came in on saturdays just to hang out and drink coffee - they got to make furniture out of the scraps for free. when i interveiwed i didn't want to leave i just sat there smiling, the guy said "UH, interviews over...." to give me the hint.
did I make the right choice by taking the arch job? i wonder. i wouldn't call the place i work at now the happy factory. i'd call it the sucky place. and we don't even have folgers. we drink "member's mark" coffee like we're homeless or something. god i need to move.
Interesting. I was just thinking about going down to the new Lowes they are building here and trying to get a supplemental part-time gig as a kitchen designer… and now to find out they may not even hire me…
daver - maybe it's just me. mjh002 got a job there
i met with a friend of mine, who is working in the Expo Store as assistant interior designer. Not to be disrespectful, but her work ethics during school really sucked - it was only a surprise as to how she survived 5 years in school and graduated.
Somehow the people in Expo have fallen in love with her and she now makes (get this-) 65K per year after 2 years of working there. With all benefits. Also, she mentioned that clients and contractors look at her with a lot of respect because she works at Expo, and her design decisions are also given a lot of consideration.
Luck???
I too was employed at Lowes for a year and a half. But I slung paint in the paint department. In general I value the experience for what it was...a nice weekend job. However, it gets pretty old telling customers were to find stuff...think about this next time you go into a store and start asking questions before you read signs.
This one guy seriously came up to me and said.." know if I was a hammer where would I be?"
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